Iterating for better: How G Into Gaming wants to drive diversity forward

New year, new MCV! For our first issue of 2019, in partnership with Amiqus, we’ve introduced a new regular section called Iterating for Better, supporting and promoting companies that champion diversity. Introducing this new format is Amiqus’ Liz Prince herself, telling us more about the G into Gaming initiative.

It’s a year since we launched the Putting The G Into Gaming initiative – a campaign which is working with similar bodies to address the gender imbalance in the games industry.

If you’re not up to speed with G Into Gaming (GiG), the idea is to drive diversity forward – just 20 per cent of the games workforce consists of women – with actionable steps, promoting gender balance to the top of the agenda in games companies.

We want to encourage women and young girls to consider a career in games and we want to support and nurture that talent going forward.

Since launching a year ago, the response we’ve had has been overwhelming and we know that there is clearly a desire by games studios to make a difference. They just don’t necessarily know where to start or the practical things they can do…

…Which is where initiatives like Putting The G Into Gaming can help. This is not just about rhetoric – although opening industry-wide discussions about topics such as unconscious bias and harassment is important. GiG has a remit to provide practical help and advice, and to this end, we are embarking on a series of workshops and talks at studios and events across the UK.

Our first took place last month at Codemasters and provided a great afternoon of learning and debate, including talks by Paula Whelan from learning and development specialist RightTrack about how unconscious bias can impact our hiring decisions, as well as a discussion by nDream’s Tamsin O’Luanaigh about the positive steps taken to increase the number of women working at nDreams.

We have more planned for the coming months and we’d love to hear from any games company who would like to host a similar event.

"We look forward to tackling a range of topics that we hope will both keep the debate going and provide useful advice."

Meanwhile, this month also sees us kick off this new monthly piece in MCV which will be focused on championing all areas of diversity. We look forward to tackling a range of topics that we hope will both keep the debate going and provide useful advice. We’ll be welcoming guest contributors too. G Into Gaming is an industry-wide initiative, it’s a platform that’s open to all to contribute positively with the aim of making real change.

We would love to hear from individuals too about the challenges they face, the obstacles that they’ve overcome and the differences they have made to their organisations. And we’ll be highlighting some of the great work taking place to tackle the gender imbalance, both within the games industry and beyond – such as GCHQ’s recent positive action in launching women-only training courses to encourage more young women into the intelligence community.

We have only just begun with GiG and we look forward to working with you all to take this important initiative further forward to achieve real change.